Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!: More Magical Tales from the Author of God, No! (27 page)

MY SON’S MORALITY DOES NOT COME FROM GOD

THERE WAS A BIG ATHEIST SHINDIG IN WASHINGTON, D.C., IN 2011.
There were about 20,000 people on the mall getting together in the rain to be recognized as atheists. I wanted to be there, but I was contracted to do a magic show in Vegas that day. I couldn’t get there, but I sent a video and made a few jokes.

Atheists will not have their Stonewall riots. Unfortunately, gays needed to riot. There were draconian laws preventing them from just living their lives. They were attacked and beaten. They were killed. They are still oppressed by the government. Obama “evolved” to the point that he thinks he feels okay about people loving each other, but not okay enough to help them get the freedom to do that. There are comparisons between gays in the sixties and atheists today, but we have to be careful not to exaggerate those comparisons. Yes, gays and atheists are pitied, shunned and insulted. There are some awful stories of atheists being beaten up in the USA, but I think many fewer than gays. Twentieth-century atheist pioneer Madalyn Murray O’Hair was put on the cover of
Life
magazine as “The Most Hated Woman in America.” Ms. O’Hair’s family was beaten and some very bad things happened to her directly as a result of her lack of belief. It’s possible the worst things that happened to Madalyn (kidnapping and murder) had nothing to do with her atheism, but she might have gotten more help if she had been a believer. Atheists lose jobs and too often lose the love of their whole families when they come out of that huge benighted closet.

I’m afraid that the main reason I’m proud to be an American is that I was born here. That’s the way that our tribal shit is wired, and it’s hard to fight. But there are things I like about the USA apart from the built-in patriotism. I love “Yankee Doodle.” I love that the British made up a song to make fun of the American rubes with their bad wigs and bumpkin ways, and the asshole Americans adopted it as their fight song and sang it while kicking ass. One of the most successful businesses in my hometown area of Massachusetts is Yankee Candle, and there are books of Yankee wisdom in all the gift shops. “Yankee” began as an insult for all Americans and ended up an insult for New Englanders, but we all use it with pride.

I’m a little bummed by the word “gay” for gay. If I had been in charge of the gay movement they would have done it more “Yankee Doodle” style. Of course if I were in charge of the gay movement, we’d be listening to Sun Ra instead of Lady Gaga and we’d have way worse haircuts.

If I had my way, we would be using “queer” (not “fag” because it excludes women) or even “homo.” I love when those words are used with pride. Let them name you with hate, and come back with love. I’d be a homosexual infidel before I’d be a gay bright. I gave a very small amount of jingle to the “brights.” They were trying to find a term to make atheists a more marketable brand. “Bright” seems as good as “gay,” but it didn’t catch on. You can argue that “gay” doesn’t really work either. “Gay” is now used as a negative term that doesn’t quite mean “homosexual” but is close enough to be creepy and bum my shit. “Atheist” is like “homosexual” and I like that more. It’s the term I like the most. I way don’t like any of the “humanist” names for atheists; it’s like if gays tried to pretend that sex wasn’t really part of who they are. We atheists don’t only love humans, we also don’t want religion. I would love to adopt “heathen” or “infidel” and say them with pride. I’d love to call myself a “Yankee Heathen,” more than an “American Bright.” But “heathen” and “infidel” in this country are a little too goofy.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair went with “American Atheist,” so I’ll go with her. O’Hair sure was nutty, but I’m okay with her as our leader. Atheists have always been a little ahead of the curve on feminism. In a list of the superstars of modern atheism, you have Ayn Rand, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali right at the top. So much of the oppression of women comes from religion, so that shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s still something we godless heathen infidels can be proud of.

My son was born May 22, 2006. Since the birth of my Moxie and Zz, it takes all my willpower to write and talk about anything other than my children. Every word they speak, everything they do, seems to cry out to be recorded and shared, but I try to leave my camera and my notes in another room. An unexamined life is not worth living, but an electronically recorded life is not lived at all.

Zolten Penn Jillette took his first steps walking toward the porn star Nina Hartley. She was visiting our home and Zz was just under a year old. His standing was still wobbly, but as Nina and I sat talking on the couch, Zz pulled himself up and toddled over to her arms. When Moxie was one, Bob Dylan let her bang on his keyboard and lick his guitar. Our children have privileged lives.

When Zz was about two, he was playing by himself one day as I sat on the other side of the room, reading or something. I don’t know where Mox was. Because our children are eleven months apart and best friends (for now), they’re always together, but for some reason Mox and Emily were out of the room. At least that’s the way I remember it now. It’s possible I wasn’t even there and my wife witnessed it and told me about it, but when I hear a great story, my memory often puts me in the middle of the scene.

The way I remember it, Zz was playing quietly by himself and I was reading on the other side of the room. He was oblivious to me. He tried to grab something with his teeth and instead must have bitten his own arm. There are coordination issues at that age. Zz’s bite hurt him a little. He made a distress sound, which got my attention and then he said to himself, “No biting. Time-out.” He put down the toys, stopped playing and walked across the room. He stood, sadly and quietly, in the corner for a couple of minutes and then said, “Okay,” walked back to the center of the room, got happy, picked up his toys and went back to playing.

My son was perpetrator, victim, witness, police, prosecutor, jury, judge, jailer, parole board, and rehabilitated citizen. He had learned the lesson of not biting. He didn’t need me, and he certainly didn’t need any god. Zolten’s morality gets more sophisticated every day, but it doesn’t need to. He was pretty much there at two years old. He had the basic principles in place. Don’t cause pain.

I’d like to say this story is evidence that my son is a moral genius, but I don’t believe that. I believe he’s a normal child (yeah, most children take their first steps into the arms of a porn star), and all normal children understand the moral code at an early age. Children are cruel, children are violent, children have no patience, children are moody, and children can’t seem to understand that sneaking under Daddy’s desk when he’s lost in thought while writing his book and grabbing his feet is going to scare the living shit out of him. Maybe they do understand that last one. Children have a lot of work to do on impulse control, but morality takes its place early on. There are studies about normal children knowing the moral difference between a teacher saying it’s okay to stand up during circle time and a teacher saying it’s okay to lie and hit. They know the teacher can’t turn something that is morally wrong into something right by just saying it. They understand that right and wrong are separate from authority.

Years ago, I brought a date to hear an atheist speaker (I knew how to pitch the old woo, huh?), and during the Q&A a stranger sitting next to us stood up with a question, “If there’s no god, what’s stopping us from just raping and killing all we want?” Before the speaker onstage could give his answer, my date raised her hand, stood up and asked, “Quick question: may I change my seat please?” She got a huge laugh and had made the philosophic argument perfectly. If you rape and kill, people will move away from you. That’s all.

I do rape and kill all I want. The amount I want to rape and kill is zero. I completely condone murder fantasies—there are no thought police—but I don’t have those thoughts myself. “Didn’t you want to punch Clay Aiken in the face?” Nope. Not once. I just wanted to get back to my real business partner, Teller, and back to my real team, my family. When I’m pissed off at people, I have no desire to kill them or even hurt them. I don’t even want to yell at them. I don’t want to talk to them. I just want to get away from them. Whether rape is a crime of hate or a crime of sex, it doesn’t ever cross my mind. I don’t want to fuck when I’m angry, and there’s nothing sexy to me about someone who is not attracted to me. I take it as sexual rejection if my wife pauses for a moment to pull back her hair before she kisses me. We have sickening evidence that not everyone feels the same way about rape and murder, but I believe my lack of desire for violence is typical. Many religious people seem to think that it’s nothing but faith that stops them from committing three-state killing sprees with a side of forced sodomy.

It’s not fair to say all Christians are murdering rapists being held back by fear of hell, or desire for heaven, but as unfair as it is, it’s bothersome how many Christians lead with it. The argument that the only reason you’re not killing and raping me is that your magic book teaches you not to is not reassuring, and I don’t think it’s even true. Christians defend the insanity of the Bible by saying how good, kind and peaceful Jesus was in the New Testament, even though he negates none of the Old Testament’s horrors. What do they mean by “good” about Jesus anyway? If all morality comes from god, isn’t all of the Old Testament’s genocide, slavery, rape, incest, torture, and ignorance good by definition? If all morality comes from god, what does it mean to believe “god is good”? Wouldn’t that be a tautology? If Satan were to win the final battle (the spoiler says he doesn’t), defeat god, and become the most powerful force in the universe, wouldn’t he be our god? We’d meet the new boss, and he’d be the same as the old boss—good, by definition. Would we just replace the cross with heavy metal horns and start fucking our sisters’ assholes on beds of goats’ blood in the name of all that is unholy, while listening to Slayer? Wouldn’t that be community service?

That’s beyond flippant, but anyone who says god is good has made the argument that morality exists outside religion. Either that or they’re saying “X = X” and there are quicker ways to say that. You can say that clearly by just shutting the fuck up.

If Zolten refrains from hitting Moxie when I’m watching, I don’t consider that morality. Maybe he’s hoping that I’ll reward him if he doesn’t and worried that I’ll punish him if he does. He’s right—if he hits his sister, he gets a time-out, except for that one time when she was being a real douche and Daddy turned a blind eye. (I’m a peacenik, but she was being such an asshole.) That’s not morality. Morality is when they aren’t being supervised and they get along without hitting. It’s morality when Zz controls his temper from the inside because it’s the right thing to do. That’s morality outside god, and if there’s morality without god, we don’t need god for morality.

Richard Dawkins writes about morality in animals other than humans. Many religions say that only humans have a soul, and in claiming that, they can’t attribute any non-human moral action to god. If monkeys are good and god is good, good means something other than god. Oh boy, the beginning of that sentence is so close to:

Monkeys = good

Good = god

Therefore:

Monkeys = god

And by the commutative property:

God = monkey

God is a monkey!

I came so fucking close to convincing myself to be a priest.

When I have just my 140 Twitter characters or a sound bite on Bill Maher, I’ve said things like, “Only atheists can be moral. If you’re doing it for reward or to avoid punishment, it’s not morality.” That’s 100 characters on the nose, which leaves you room for “@Penn Jillette” and the appositive “SexyBeast” and you still have room for a hashtag. Those 100 characters are provocative, but not completely fair. It’s not only that atheists can have morality, it’s that morality
is
atheist. We judge religion with our morality. We judge god with a morality that’s outside god. Every person who talks about what a good man/teacher/god/superhero Jesus was is saying they know good outside Jesus. Here I’m talking about real morality, the not killing, not raping, not stealing morality. Some of the rules religion adds in, like kill gays and atheists, wear magic underwear, and don’t eat certain stuff on certain days is not morality. It’s just nutty cult rules—like wearing peach and black to a Prince concert. Morality is outside religion. Morality is above religion. You must first have morality to say that god is good.

I didn’t have to teach my son that hurting people is bad any more than I had to teach him to walk toward Nina Hartley. Those are just part of being human.

Listening to: “Beautiful Boy”—John Lennon